Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Vomiting serenely in the bushes

In the car Mum was tense, tense even for her. When we were some way from the airport Dad pulled the car over, but it must have been a signal from Mum which made him stop. From my position in the front seat, required by the inflexibility of my legs, I dare say I missed a lot of byplay over the years. Then Mum had another go at asserting herself. When she spoke, she leaned over between the seats so that her rapid breaths sounded in my ear and buffeted against my face. In that posture she wasn’t properly in my line of vision — for a true confrontation she would have had to get out of the car and face me down through the windscreen, but that would hardly fit as the setting for this little tableau, A Mother’s Final Appeal, though it might have fitted with her general sense that the world was bearing down on her.

Mum’s sense of drama was still rudimentary — she didn’t yet feel entitled to make any sort of scene. Granny had drummed into her the idea that anyone who raised his or her voice in an argument was wrong by definition. If ever Granny broke that rule and raised her voice herself, without stopping being right, other people were normally too alarmed to find the inconsistency.

From her position in the back seat, head thrust forward and turned round, she may even have felt that I was being stubborn in not meeting her gaze — being stiff-necked, as people say. She said, ‘Listen, JJ. It’s not too late to call this whole trip off. There’s no shame in admitting you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. We can just turn round and go home. No one will think the less of you. Your father and I will never mention it again. Dad can get you a ticket for somewhere nearer and just as nice.’

‘It’s not a trip, it’s a pilgrimage. I’m not going there because it’s nice !’ Perhaps this wasn’t the most tactful line to take, but I was beginning to feel genuinely claustrophobic about Mum’s need to control me. How threatened she was by hints of independence on my part! And I suppose, seeing it from her point of view, she had her reasons: what was the meaning of her life, unless it was to make mine possible? She had forged an identity for herself by chaining us together.

I wonder what would have happened if I had given in to the pressure, the parental front united for once. I can imagine Mum breaking out the tin of Roses from my case right away (I’d forgotten to charge Peter with their removal), passing them round in hysterical relief and stuffing her own cheeks with sweets, tears running down her face in her gratitude for the reprieve she’d won herself, by staving off my maturity. After that, she might have signalled Dad to pull over again, and vomited serenely in the bushes. Beyond that, I can’t guess. I wonder if I would even have taken up my place at Cambridge, if I’d lost the battle for India.

Before I said yes to their offer of a lift, I had made Mum and Dad promise they wouldn’t wait until my plane took off. Otherwise, I told them, I would take the Mini and let it take its chances for five weeks in the car park. They hung around rather helplessly after they’d helped me check my case in until I reminded Dad of his promise, and of how much he hated goodbyes and all that emotional claptrap. After that he led Mum away, though he did explore the furthest tender reaches of his vocabulary by calling me ‘Chicken’ when he patted me goodbye.

In 1970 Air India advertised itself as The Airline that Treats You Like a Maharajah , and I can’t argue with that on the basis of its performance that year. Of course I can’t vouch for anything but First Class. Ladies in saris started serving me dainties almost immediately. Caviar, smoked salmon, pâté de foie gras , all these got the thumbs-down from me, but they did a nice line in spicy nuts, and there was pink champagne, served in proper fluty glasses, which suit my hands better than any other shape.

Pinkness was a definite theme, so that the first-class cabin had almost the feel of a boudoir. There were pretty pink tablecloths and proper napkins. Luxury seemed to be a female preoccupation, though in all those hours I only glimpsed one or two Maharanis in First Class.

Cold international air strips scruples away

The ladies in saris seemed a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to order a nice juicy steak, which was what Maharajas with my skin tone normally plumped for. That must have been a major part of their training, to offer taboo fare without showing disgust, up above the clouds where the cold international air strips scruples away.

My nearest Maharajah (as pale-complected as me) was a little distance away, thanks to the luxurious width of the seats, but I could see that he was making more work for the staff than I was. They couldn’t do enough for him. He had loosened his tie, a procedure I’ve never managed to understand. Obviously I’m not the person to ask about the finer points of formal dressing, but doesn’t that produce the worst of both worlds, encumbrance without the faintest possibility of elegance?

The ladies in saris kept popping juicy things into the beak of this burly cuckoo. I suppose pâté de foie gras is juicy — I have no plans to find out. His fantasy of luxury was clear, that he should be catered to as intensively as possible, to get the maximum value out of every costly minute (costly to his employers, I imagined, rather than to him personally), even if the unnaturally accelerated intake of food and drink made him go very red and sweaty in the face.

My notion of luxury was very different, and I was living it out very fully. Mostly I waved the attentions of the ladies in saris away, I gave little shakes of the head. I would graciously accept snacks from time to time, perhaps a small bowl of pilaff, and a little light topping-up of my elegant glass, but I declined the immoderacy of a full meal.

The theatrical show the cabin staff put on for my neighbour began to seem actively oppressive to me. I had seen similar rituals performed at the Compleat Angler, but everything looked very different at twenty-five thousand feet and six hundred miles an hour. A steward in a tunic came pushing a trolley before him, then reverently removed its polished metal cover to reveal a slab of roasted flesh, which he then carved with the gravest ceremony on to my neighbour’s plate. He made great play of tossing salad high in the air, virtually juggling it with adroit tongs, so that the dressed leaves in their tumbling came within inches of colliding with the ceiling panels (necessarily low), where they would have left faint imprints flavoured with garlic and mustard.

This should have seemed merely droll, but for me it had a nightmarish aspect. The flushed businessman being fed so relentlessly seemed to be on the receiving end of a torture rather than a treat. It was as if I was being given a vision of his karma, a terrible locked pattern like a recurring equation, in which he was alternately a goose being force-fed grain until its liver slowly exploded inside it, and a man being force-fed that liver.

My own experience of force-feeding was modest, extending only to the time at Vulcan when the demonic matron Judy Brisby had stuffed congealing pilchards into my mouth and held my nose, but it had left its mark. I felt the sort of shiver which Mum always interpreted as a goose walking over her grave — in this case a goose that wanted the return of its liver, rudely confiscated, pressed in jelly, and sold on.

All this restaurant pantomime was no more than a game of status, disconnected from any matter of appetite. The stewards might just as well have spared my neighbour the labour of greed by placing in front of him a gorgeously illuminated calligraphic parchment reading: Mere feet behind you, screened by curtains and the impalpable screens of caste, tourists, families and lesser businessmen are wrestling with sachets of salad cream and trying to unpeel slimy layers of cold meat from the bottom of a plastic tray, or else peering with distaste at bowls of sloppy curry … and you, perhaps, honoured sir, would care for a cheese and pickle sandwich (freshly made of course)? We have tomatoes!